It’s spring break weekend across most of Colorado. Among other things, that means track and field action around the state takes a decidedly downward turn. Lots of folks are off basking on beaches, delighting in the Arizona desert, or taking a final fling in on the slopes. Track is somewhat of an afterthought for many this week.

A substantial slice of Colorado talent that is competing this weekend is already pointed toward Arizona for the Chandler Rotary Invitational. It’s the biggest-deal meet you can find each spring in Arizona. None of the marks count for state qualifying back here in Colorado, but the meet retains a substantial gravitational pull even so. If you are making the trip, however, hopefully you purchased your flights long ago because, well, you can’t afford the airfare this week.

When I write the week-in-review articles for this week, be sure that I’ll spill some ink covering the Colorado performances at Chandler Rotary. Annually, that meet will get more Colorado performances than any other out-of-state meet, including Arcadia.

Back home, the pickings are relatively slim.

In varsity-level action this week, Denver South is hosting a meet at All-City Stadium this Thursday. Look for this one to be very well attended. Currently, there is something on the order of 30 schools on the registration list. Most of those teams will not be fully loaded, but there will assuredly be at least clusters of high-end competition.

The Max Marr meet in Berthoud holds center stage on Friday. Something on the order of 20 teams will be on-hand for that one. Most, not all, of those schools will be 3A and 4A programs—schools more or less the size of Berthoud. For schools attending this meet, the dining options in and around Berthoud are far more expansive than they once were. That’s mostly a good thing, but some of us miss the days when Berthoud was a bucolic little burg.

I don’t know much about Max Marr’s story, or why he’s important in Berthoud, but perhaps somebody will tell me. I do know this much: Mr. Marr was inducted into the Colorado High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 1993. The one team state track and field title earned by Berthoud came almost 20 years after 1993. Beyond that, it’s all guesswork.

On the Western Slope, the Warrior Wild West Invitational, hosted by Central Grand Junction, spreads out over two days at Stocker Stadium. With two days and about 20 schools, there should be plenty of opportunity for schools to load up some events and shoot for the moon.

Finally, on Saturday, we see something more like a typical slate of meets.

Traveling east to west, we have the Yuma Early Qualifier, the Lamar Savage Invitational (likely in its last year under that full meet name), the Grizzly Invitational in Greeley, the Runners Roost of Fort Collins, the Broomfield Shootout, and the North Fork Invitational in Hotchkiss (meaning the Warrior Wild West won’t have all the Western Slope franchises). If reputations established prior to COVID hold true, the Broomfield Shootout and the Runners Roost will weigh in as the most competitive of Saturday’s meets.

The mostly smaller-school meets in that collection figure to take place at Yuma, Lamar, and North Fork. Both Yuma and Lamar figure to be hosting the season opener for several schools, and the season openers for several more athletes. The Grizzly Invitational, hosted by Northridge HS, should have a decent mix of larger and smaller schools. It will be mostly larger schools at the rest.

While we have the Grizzly Invitational on our mind, perhaps you can name three other Colorado high schools with Grizzly mascots? And, easily the oldest high school in Colorado with the Grizzly mascot is …?

Expect to see a small handful of schools doubling up on meets this weekend.

Following spring break, the feeding frenzy ramps up in a more serious way. In April and May, there will be seven weeks remaining of qualifying before state funnels out onto the field of Jeffco Stadium on May 19, 20, and 21.